


Minor Poetry

by Nympha_Alba



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Romance, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2817485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nympha_Alba/pseuds/Nympha_Alba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On her wedding night, Harriet finds it difficult to sleep - for more than one reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minor Poetry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doctornerdington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, **doctornerdington**!
> 
> You wanted Peter and Harriet on their wedding night, and Harriet's thoughts on being a wife - I loved that as a prompt, and I hope you'll enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Thanks to P for the beta.

"She went to bed thinking more about another person than about herself. This goes to prove that even minor poetry may have its practical uses."  
Dorothy L. Sayers, _Gaudy Night_

 

It took Harriet a long time to fall asleep. 

She lay in the dark looking up at the ceiling that she could just barely make out in the faint light from the moon, feeling the warm soft hum in her body after their lovemaking. Thinking. Beside her, Peter slept quietly, with a minute snuffle like a cat sleeping deeply. He was on his side facing her, and the moon allowed her to see his features quite clearly. He looked much younger when he slept, his face smooth and untroubled.

Well, Harriet thought as she turned her eyes to the ceiling again, during these past few months she had learnt at least two things about love that she hadn't known before:

She was ridiculously in love with Peter.

She had never been in love before.

Poor Philip! she thought and closed her eyes for a moment. Yes, poor Philip, in so many ways.

It was not possible to compare two people to one another, it was something one absolutely shouldn't do, and still she couldn't help doing exactly that. It seemed to her at that moment that Philip had only existed in her life to provide her with a kind of measuring stick, something to measure other lovers against – not that there had been any other lovers until Peter. And now Harriet knew several things: She had never been in love with Philip, however much she had believed herself to be at the time. She had never been herself with Philip, because it had been impossible to relax. With him, everything was either scheduled, calculated, or a test, or sometimes all of those. She also knew, now, that she had never truly enjoyed sex with him. Oh, it had been _enjoyable_ at times, but always somehow restrained – she had never let go because _he_ never had. There had always been caution of one kind or another, on either his part or hers. Philip had always watched her, as if making notes, and Harriet realised that at the back of her mind she had kept wondering when whatever she had just done or said or looked would turn up in his next novel, and in what shape.

With Peter, however…

Harriet turned her head and looked at his peaceful, sleeping face. With Peter, everything was different. Everything.

She recalled that feverish, important conversation at Oxford, when Miss de Vine had told her she had to face the facts. Harriet remembered her own angry confession: "If I once gave way to Peter, I would go up like straw", followed by Miss de Vine's question: "How often has he used that weapon against you?". Equally well, she remembered her own reply: "Never. Never."

Miss de Vine certainly knew how to shake out everything irrelevant and only keep the facts.

It had been a revelation of sorts to Harriet, but why it should have been, she couldn't fathom now. She had already known everything that Miss de Vine had pointed out. That Peter would never make up Harriet's mind for her. That he would never take her independence away from her. That he was sensitive, unselfish, and honest – as if Harriet hadn't known this from her own bitter experience!

Only tonight, this night, her wedding night, she could no longer feel the least trace of bitterness towards the man who had given her her life back.

She wondered, now, how long she had really been in love with him. Longer than she would like to admit, she was sure. By the time Miss de Vine had forced her to open her eyes, it had already been obvious to everyone except herself – and possibly, _possibly_ , Peter.

Harriet groaned. 

"For an intelligent woman," she said to herself, "I'm really rather stupid." 

Beside her Peter stirred, reaching for her without opening his eyes, his warm hand sliding across her bare stomach leaving a tiny shiver of pleasure in its wake. "What was that, darling?"

"Oh, I was just talking to myself. A bad habit of mine."

He pulled her to him, and she marvelled that he did it so naturally and simply, as if he had done it for years and this was a night among many – as it would be. As it would be! "And what were you telling yourself?"

"Nothing," said Harriet firmly, and when she kissed him he opened his eyes. "Nothing worth paying attention to. I'm sorry I woke you."

"Are you?" He kissed her back. "I'm not. Not in the least. I believe we can find other things to do than sleep."

His hand, placed gently just below her right breast as if waiting for permission, made her breath quicken only by being where it was. Philip had never wanted to give pleasure just for the sake of giving and had taken it guardedly, although more eagerly than he'd given it. Peter, Harriet had learnt tonight, did not even think along those lines. To him, sex was an adventure they embarked on together, searching, finding, exploring. Who gave and who took billowed back and forth, and it didn't matter. It was an adventure shared.

As his mouth slid slowly down her neck and further down until the tip of his tongue found her nipple, she closed her eyes and, with her fingers in his hair, noted that she was a most willing companion.

***

Tonight of all nights, she dreamt about it again.

The black hood came down over her head, and with her heartbeat monstrously loud in her ears and her breath coming quickly, she waited for the trap door to open, waited for the jerk that would break her neck…

Waking with a gasp she sat up in bed, clutching and clawing at her neck as if fighting the noose. It took her some seconds to come back to herself and realise where she was. Outside, dawn came creeping silent and grey, and there was no noose, there was no hood, there was only a newly-wed couple in a goosefeather bed. 

As Harriet took a deep breath, two, to prove to herself she could, Peter murmured something and his hand came up to stroke her back.

"Bad dream?"

"Yes," she confessed. "I have these nightmares."

"What about?" He pulled her down to him and cradled her in his arms, impossibly warm in the chilly room, and Harriet thought it would be a long time before she stopped marvelling at the smoothness of his skin. "Not about me, I hope, or the marriage? You're not regretting it, Harriet, are you?"

"No, my lord," she said meekly, which earned her a bottom pinch. She swatted at his hand. "Do you really want to know?"

"I want to know everything," said Peter with that seriousness that sat so attractively in his eyes. "Everything you want to tell me."

"Well, then." Harriet took a deep breath. "I dreamt of… of hanging." Ignoring his look of horror, she continued: "It doesn't happen very often any more. I used to have those nightmares all the time at first, in prison and after. But not now. I don't know why it came to me tonight."

She could see a thousand thoughts in his eyes, but he only said at long last: "Let's hope, then, that this time was the last."

His hand was on her hip and his thumb stroked her skin in a small, fan-shaped movement, and apparently that was all it took for her to forget nightmares and everything else and want him again, the way she had wanted him all night and, to be honest, well before that. _If I once gave way to Peter, I would go up like straw._ And so she had, but the wonderful thing was that, unlike Humpty Dumpty, she could be put back together again each time. She could be put back together, only to burn again.

She kissed his mouth, his chin, his collarbone, and this time she was the explorer, her hand playing with the amazing, silken hardness and heat of him. When she straddled him his eyes were heavy as he looked up at her, his hands holding her hips as she guided him inside her and took him in as deep as she could. His skin was pearly white in the light of dawn as she rode him, contrasting oddly with her own, duskier hue. As he slipped one hand down between them, deftly finding what he sought, Harriet screwed her eyes shut and couldn't hold back her cry of pleasure.

***

It was full daylight now and the ugliness of the room showed up mercilessly.

"I'm sorry, Peter," said Harriet, "to be trying your aesthetic sensitivities like this."

"The room may be trying them, but _you_ are certainly not." He proved the truth of that statement by kissing her neck, his hand still cupped around her breast, the palm teasing her nipple.

"Peter," she said gravely, "please tell me you're not going to be one of those husbands who adore everything their wives do."

"Oh, I'm afraid I will, but don't worry, I shan't let on."

She laughed and thought in amazement: So this is what it's like to be entirely happy. She was a little sore after the night's repeated lovemaking, her neck and chest burned from Peter's stubble and the room was truly ghastly, but she was warm and relaxed and felt oddly rested despite the lack of sleep.

 _Balance._ That was the word that came to mind, the word that Miss de Vine had stressed in that uncomfortable conversation about Peter. A delicate balance.  


They had found it already, after no time at all. No doubt it would be disturbed on more than one occasion, but Harriet trusted Peter to be able to bring it back even when she herself couldn't. That trust, she thought, was a kind of balance in itself.

"I can hear Bunter downstairs already," she said, "but we don't have to get up yet, do we?"

"Most certainly not. We need more sleep, but before we sleep there's something I want to do. I've been wanting to all night."

"What, Peter?"

"This," he said, pushing the eiderdown aside and leaning down to kiss her stomach. 

He slid further down, parting her legs, teasing her softly with lips and tongue. "This," he murmured again, the vibrations making her groan.

His tongue was skilled, at once delicate and relentless, and Harriet gave herself up to it, closing her eyes to shut out the room and focus only on physical sensation.

***

Balance, she thought again just before she fell asleep. Peter would let her have her own thoughts, her own mind, her own work; he would help if she wanted help and stay out if she didn't. She remembered the sonnet she had begun to write at Oxford, that Peter had concluded so elegantly – irritatingly elegant, far better than anything she'd been able to come up with. But she could stand that, she thought, as long as the end results were good. Even the miserable Wilfred had become a real person under the scrutiny of Peter's eyes.

This, Harriet decided, was the most crucial difference between Philip and Peter: the genuine dedication to true companionship, and the necessary generosity to realise it. Peter respected her as a person and as a writer and would never take anything away from her that was worth having. This was what Miss de Vine had seen, too, and it was the ultimate reason for Harriet's final acceptance of Peter's proposal. The ultimate reason, but only one of the million ones.

If they could make one sonnet sound so good with a minimum of work, who knew what they could achieve together when they honestly tried? They could not be confined. There truly were no limits.

Smiling a little at her own delusions of grandeur, Harriet fell asleep to the distant but satisfying music of minor poetry.


End file.
